III. Integrated circuits (IC) utilize micro-components such as transistors, capacitors, and resistors that use and control electrical energy, frequently in digital form, for controllers and computers. Larger, macro-sized solid state components are employed as power controllers such as switches, rectifiers, and alternators. Neither the micronor the macro-sized components or conductors are 100 percent efficient. Specifically, the micro-digital assemblies (integrated circuits) used in computers convert most of the electrical energy used in their computations into heat.
IV. In the early versions of these integrated circuits, which had relatively few components per unit area, natural convection cooling proved adequate to maintain the operating temperatures at safe values. As technology allowed packing more components into an integrated package, the heat generated increased greatly, requiring motor driven fans to be mounted directly on the integrated circuit packages, thereby providing forced convection cooling, to control the package temperature. In order to accommodate higher and higher component densities and higher operating speeds requiring more and more power, more and more vigorous efforts have been made to remove heat effectively from the integrated circuit packages to maintain the operating temperatures of the integrated circuit at safe levels.
V. These efforts include more powerful fans, specialized venturis to direct the fan output onto the external surface of the integrated circuit package at higher velocities, plastic fins molded directly into the integrated circuit package and metal, and fins mounted on the package with heat conducting paste to better foster heat flow from the package to the fins to the fan forced air stream. All of these state of the art, commercially available, heat dissipation schemes have employed macro-cooling methods to cool micro-components.
VI. The increases in component density and accompanying heat dissipation rates have raised the operating temperatures of IC packages to such levels that, even with the best heat dissipating systems, their operating lives can be endangered. To cope with this problem, temperature sensing thermistors have been placed in the micro-circuits to reduce their performance and thereby their heat dissipation and temperature under high ambient conditions or when the heat dissipating mechanisms lose efficacy, as when fouled with room dust. These mechanisms keep the computer operating but at reduced capability. This reduction may be tolerable in household computing situations, but is intolerable in military or high heat flux commercial systems where human lives and great fortunes are at risk.
VII. The current invention is directed to means for sharply improving the coefficients of heat transfer between the integrated circuit package and the coolant by improving the flow rate of cooling fluid dispersed over the IC package in the form of ultra thin film (thickness could be from a few microns to as low as sub micron thickness) for evaporative cooling.